


The Wise Man's Guide to Falling in Love with Your Best Friend

by Mel_S_Bancroft



Series: Guide to Falling [2]
Category: Kuroko no Basuke | Kuroko's Basketball
Genre: Falling In Love, First Kiss, Fluff, M/M, POV Second Person
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-08
Updated: 2016-02-08
Packaged: 2018-05-19 03:51:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,815
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5952663
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mel_S_Bancroft/pseuds/Mel_S_Bancroft
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>First, it's inevitable. Fighting it will get you nowhere, because it's not like you can help falling in love.</p><p>Now with a Russian translation - link in notes.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Wise Man's Guide to Falling in Love with Your Best Friend

**Author's Note:**

> This has been sitting around completed for what feels like forever. I don't really have a beta-reader so I beta all my own work, but I also don't like reading my own writing. It makes me cringe and I worry that it's awful, that it's worded awkwardly, etc. I told myself that I would let this one sit for a week at most before beta-ing it, but it sat for more like two weeks. Or three. Or... actually I don't even know. A long time.
> 
> Well, it's here now. So, enjoy!
> 
> A heads up: I used a couple Japanese phrases in here because it flowed better in my head in Japanese than translated because of Shin-chan's quirk. They are:  
>  _Unmei nanodayo._ (運命なのだよ) "It's fate."  
>  _Touzen nanodayo._ (当然なのだよ) "Of course." It also means "Naturally."
> 
> This now has a Russian translation done by the lovely [SollyDoll](https://www.fanfiction.net/u/7771592/), which can be found on AO3 (link at end of fic) and [ficbook](https://ficbook.net/readfic/5098264).

First, it’s inevitable. You realize this fairly early on, and it’s best that you just accept it without a fuss. You might feel like a fool at times for falling for someone who so obviously finds you annoying—though you don’t annoy him too much, you know, since he always shows you, in his own way, that he still sees you as his best (and possibly only) friend nonetheless—but just roll with it. The first step in anything is acceptance, and accepting it, you feel, will make it easier for you to get over him later.

Second, don’t wait for that time when you can start to give up on him. You don’t know when exactly he became Shin-chan to you, but when one day you say it out loud and you merely tell him that it suits him in reply to the scandalized look he gives you, you know that it’s true. Though you don’t know it at first, this also marks the point at which you can never turn back. Because now you’re attached to him, and he to you, though he’d never admit it. And when you start noticing that your eyes start following, start seeking out and admiring his long-limbed grace and beauty, even without any conscious effort, noticing your breath catch whenever he blushes at your teasing and compliments, noticing your heart stutter and stomach flip-flop whenever you come in contact, you realize that that time will never come. In your head, you can almost hear him say what you swear must be his favorite phrase, or one of them, at least:

_Unmei nanodayo._

You wouldn’t exactly call it “falling” in love. More like… “settling”? You always find yourself gravitating toward him, yes, but it’s less like the gravity of falling on Earth and more like the gravity between a planet and its satellite, keeping them close, one never straying far from the other. It’s become so natural, so inevitable for you to settle by his side at lunch, between classes, after practice, whenever there is nothing keeping you apart, that the term “falling” just doesn’t seem right anymore.

But even so, if anyone ever asked you if you’d fallen for Midorima Shintarou, your answer would most definitely be yes.

Third, don’t worry about being found out. On top of being awkward in any sort of social situation, he’s also incredibly dense; there’s no way he’s going to find out unless you tell him. And if anyone else happens to notice your increased clinginess with him, they can’t really say anything because you’ve always been clingy by nature, and he’s your best friend, and best friends are allowed to be clingy. When one day at home your sister shoots you a knowing look and waggles her eyebrows suggestively, ignore her; it’s what she always does when she’s convinced that you have a crush on someone. (She’s usually right and will take anything you might do or say in response as confirmation, and this time is no different.)

Your tendency toward being clingy also helps in other ways. Repeated exposure has reminded your heart that touching him isn’t some novel thing to freak out over every time it happens, and soon enough, things are back pretty much to how they were before you realized your crush. Soon enough, your breath no longer catches in your throat unless he is the one to initiate contact, which seems to happen more and more often now.

Fourth, don’t jump to conclusions, but also don’t dismiss everything completely out of hand.

When one day he tells you that he will ride the bike this time, despite winning the game of jan-ken as always, blink and tell him that fair’s fair, despite complaining about losing as always. File it away as evidence that Shin-chan’s starting to act more like a normal person—or as evidence of something that you don’t quite want to entertain the idea of just yet on the chance that you’re wrong.

When he starts bringing you your lucky item for the day (or making you drive him around in that accursed rickshaw to buy it) more often, you could take him at face value and believe him when he says that it’s solely for the reason that he doesn’t want your bad luck to rub off on him due to your close association. He must do everything possible in order to be chosen by fate nodayo, and all that. Or, instead, you can take note of what must surely be a light flush creeping up from below his collar which he is oh-so-smoothly trying to hide behind his hand as he needlessly adjusts his glasses for a second time, and grin up at him.

When he starts flustering more easily and snaps at you, albeit somewhat half-heartedly, more often, it might just be that he’s finally realized how annoying you actually are and he’s annoyed at himself for not seeing it before. But it might not be.

Fifth, trust your instincts. They’re called instincts for a reason—they usually know what they’re doing. And your instincts, along with all the evidence you’ve purposely gathered the last week and a half and all the evidence that you’d unwittingly compiled since your first days as teammates, are screaming that he likes you back. So when one day you’re hanging out together in your room, turn to him and take that chance.

“I really like you, ya know, Shin-chan.”

You grin wolfishly up at him as he freezes and his eyes widen slightly. Chuckling a little at how adorable he is, you continue:

“Unmei nanodayo.”

You say it fondly, your eyes soft as you gaze into the deep emerald of his, a gentleness to the upward play of your smirking lips. His cheeks redden and you begin to laugh at what you know he will say next: as always, a flustered command for you to quit copying him. But this time he decides to surprise you, for, as you learned a long time ago, Midorima Shintarou is full of surprises. This time, he turns to you, braces his hands on the floor on either side of you, and leans in close, close enough that your noses almost touch and you can feel his breath warm against your lips, his eyes as serious as they are when he shoots those miraculous threes. He’s close enough, now, that you can count each individual long eyelash behind his glasses, that you can see little flecks of almost gold within the gradation of emerald irises, the most beautiful eyes that you’ve ever seen, especially now that you’re as close as you’ve only ever dreamed of being.

“Touzen nanodayo.”

The words have barely had time to process before his mouth is on yours, clumsy and inexperienced, but soft and warm and oh so good and it leaves a pleasant warm tingling in the pit of your stomach. It’s over too soon when he pulls back mere moments later, gentle, searching eyes asking if it was okay, and you beam up at him, rising to your knees as you follow him up and place your hands on either side of his neck and kiss him properly. As your fingers slide up to bury into the thick hair at the back of his head, his own hands settle lightly, hesitantly on your hips. You hum in encouragement and his hands soon grow more confident, sliding up your back and drawing you even closer. He jerks back when you lick at his bottom lip, eyes wide and entire face redder than you’ve seen it before, though he doesn’t release his hold on you, and you laugh as you gently guide his head back down to rest your foreheads together, because it’s exactly how you expected him to react. He splutters a bit and you have to reassure him before he’ll relax again, and when he does, his expression softens and he smiles gently before kissing you again just as gently.

On the outside, nothing really changes between you. What has by now long since become your daily routine stays that way, though now he smiles a bit more and you can sneak in a few quick kisses now and then when no one’s looking.

You have to go your separate ways in college, since he’s studying in med school and you don’t know exactly what you want to do yet but you know that you don’t want to be a doctor. But when he later gets his own apartment, you still find every reason to spend all your free time there, enough so that more than half of your belongings have made their way over and he says with affected irritation that you should just move in with him since you practically live there already.

You’ll have to be the one to propose, though, unless you want to wait around for possibly years. You never quite understood how he could be such a romantic when anything remotely romantic would reduce him to a blushing mess, but his tsundere personality has always been endearing to you, no matter that others find it annoying and frustrating.

When you present him the ring, he blushes as you knew he would and accepts with only the hesitation that comes from shyness. Then he retreats to where he stores his stockpile of lucky items—which you never go near because honestly, there are just way too many and he probably has them organized in a certain way and you’d probably mess it up (or worse, end up accidentally breaking one again) and he obviously knows this because he extracts something that doesn’t look much like a lucky item from the very back of a shelf. When he returns, his blush has only darkened, and he shoves that something—a small black box—at your chest, head turned away, and needlessly adjusts his glasses. You take the box from him and shake your head as you open it because he really is just too _cute,_ and a smile has spread across your face even before you take the ring out and slip it onto your own finger, and it doesn’t fade even as you reach up on tiptoes to take his head in both hands and pull him down for a kiss.

(Sixth, he rarely says “I love you” in the conventional way. It’s always something else, with the meaning hidden underneath, like when he calls you “Bakao,” when he wishes you a safe trip to work, when he finds your lucky item, when he takes you out on surprise dates, when he makes your favorite food after a long day, when he wraps both arms around you and draws you close and just _holds_ you. But after knowing him this long—after _loving_ him this long—you already knew that, and you’d never ask for anything different.)

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Как влюбиться в своего лучшего друга. Инструкция для разумного человека](https://archiveofourown.org/works/9197261) by [SollyDoll](https://archiveofourown.org/users/SollyDoll/pseuds/SollyDoll)




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